Some good places to eat are emerging from the dark of our neighborhood. Saturday evening we went to the Grinzing Brau (mit umlaut over the a). Not so large as many of the beer gardens in the village, it sits on an island between two busy lanes of traffic. We sat at a wooden table in a small, graveled outdoor area--many more tables are inside--tolerating the traffic passing continually because we are aware that the season for dining outdoors will end soon. Just beyond our dusky, leafy seating area, large buses debouched tourists, mostly Japanese, but several European groups also. As they flowed off the bus, they eddied in the street and on the sidewalk before reforming as a wider stream and rolling into one of the beer gardens we had tried earlier, one whose fare is primarily pork and potatoes prepared at least a day before.
Although Viennese passing on the sidewalk never make eye contact with us when we are pedestrians, some force compels them to stare intensely when they walk past outdoor dining areas. They do not look at the food, but at the diners. Meeting their gaze does not dissuade them, and their heads turn relentlessly as they maintain their scrutiny until their steps carry them beyond the dining area. Although I thought of opening my mouth and sticking out my tongue with half-chewed food, I was distracted from that thought by two musicians, the best we have heard thus far. The sole diners in the outdoor area, we were treated to beautiful waltz music by a violinist and an accordion player. When the piece ended, I offered several coins to the violinist--who dumped them all back in my hand, saying that he could not accept them because we had not requested them to play. Such a thing could not happen in Rome, where itinerant musicians wish they could assault diners and go through their pockets.
Our dinner was very much to our satisfaction. We started with steins of beer and a slice of bread cut lengthwise and topped with a pasty, spicy, tomato-based spread with a touch of smoked sweet pepper. While Linda had homemade noodles in sauce, with bits of ham, I found a non-pork entree with grilled vegetables. I opted for lamb with the reasoning that cute, small creatures associated with innocence tend to taste really good, and two fine lammwurste (sausages) arrived, arced like large red calipers around a tossed mass of zucchini, red onion, red and yellow peppers, broccoli, and the inevitable potatoes (though just a few, boiled and bite-sized). All of it had been sauteed in a smoky-flavored oil. Presentation is everything. Lovely, we agreed, and we had no room for dessert.
Festival of the Tuber
One evening recently Linda and I were sitting on the sofa, surfing tv. We paused at a scene that showed a man in a chef's hat dumping a bushel of peeled potatoes into a vat. We thought we might have stumbled onto a gourmet cooking show. Soon he was dumping more and more such baskets; finally, he stepped back to talk to a reporter and admire the bubbling cauldron. Next, three or four men extracted the boiled potatoes and put them through huge ricers and then into a device like a giant food processor, which churned away until it brimmed with mashed potatoes. They then shoveled the mass into a brown mold half the size of a VW Beetle and itself shaped like a potato. Beaming, they carted it off to a waiting crowd, some of whom had already lined up with plates. The festival host, with the care of a physician doing a cesarean section, slit open the giant potato and began spooning gobs of it onto the plates of queued-up diners--and in some cases directly into their cupped hands. Looking like delighted children, each person began eating as soon as served, some using spoons and others just using two and three fingers, shoveling the delicacy in as quickly as it was emerging from the big brown womb. And so the happy scene ended. We hope that on New Year's Eve we can witness the Dropping of the Potato from the spire of St Stephen's or some similar edifice downtown.
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